


City of Echoes

by violent_ends



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Art History, Biblical Themes (Abrahamic Religions), Deckerstar on holiday, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sex, Inspired by Art, Lucifer and Michael are Twins, Lucifer is back from Hell, Lucifer reflects on history, POV Lucifer, Post-Season/Series 04, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, mentioned Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 18:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: Chloe asks Lucifer to go visit Rome with her to try and erase the bad memory she has of the place, and make a new, happier one of it together. Lucifer accepts.Or: a tour of the Eternal City through the eyes of our favorite immortal being.





	City of Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> _Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, the city of yearning._  
\- Giotto di Bondone

When the sun sets over Rome, history comes alive and lights up a spark in the ashes of Lucifer’s memories, tongues of smoke dancing to the distant echo of a simpler time. The darkness of night hugs and molds itself around the crumbling pillars of the Imperial Fora, hiding missing chunks and imperfections, and the strategically-placed lights below cast long shadows over them from the ground up, giving them an eerily majestic quality. In those rare moments when there are no cars around, it’s like nothing ever changed.

Lucifer would rather settle for the ugliness of L.A., its practical, harsh, materialistic modernity, its clean, sharp lines grounding him in the moment, in this specific time he is living – the same as the humans who now inhabit this short part of his existence. Rome, instead, reminds him so clearly of the fact that there was a _before_ and that he was _in_ it, because like him, it’s still standing after millennia, slowly engulfed in the buzz and chaos of progress but never truly disappearing under it.

Rome speaks of leather sandals tapping and horse hooves pattering along cobblestone boulevards, of gold jewels braided into the soft curls of _matronas_, of tunics and dresses that slipped off so easily, _too_ easily, certainly more than corsets and chainmail and T-shirts and zipped-up trousers and bras and all that came after, in time. It speaks of loud and lascivious bacchanals that lasted for _days_, a haze of red wine and food and so many bodies that sometimes he didn’t even know who was doing what: a man between his legs and his face between a woman’s or maybe the other way around, fingers gripping and scratching at whatever expanse of flesh was closer – humanity was so easy to revel in back then, still young and open and pliant and just _willing_ to be taken.

He was no Devil to them at the time, not yet. He was Lucifer, just Lucifer; the lightbringer, the dawnbringer, the star of the morning, for mortals did not know of his fall from grace. He found forgiveness in their pleasure, got lost in it with the same abandon he later reserved to drugs, when they came along. They were his cocaine back then, pure and forbidden and exhilarating, until Amenadiel managed to drag him back to Hell from the current orgy he was enjoying, the taste of grapes and sex lingering on his tongue for weeks after.

The defiant, almost unapologetic immortality of Rome, now, is overwhelming – especially in the face of the inescapable mortality of the woman who accompanies him.

But Chloe insisted, and Lucifer has a hard time denying her what she wants, a weakness he is very much aware of and that is probably more dangerous than bullets when they pierce his skin in her presence. _Let’s make a new memory of it together_, she said, after Father Kinley and the demon uprising and Hell, after the betrayal that tainted and ruined what they had, for a time. He understands that Rome, in her mind, embodies all that went wrong, and maybe it does.

So here they are, on this trip meant to somehow exorcise and cleanse this place from the weight it carries, although Lucifer isn’t sure that’s possible, at least for him: Rome's weight is heavier in his heart than it is in Chloe’s, and the gap in between is of thousands of years, a concept she struggles to grasp as the human that she is, he knows. But still, it is a beautiful city, and they never went on a trip together alone, like the couple that they are now. It’s conventional and romantic and in this, he finds comfort.

They take strolls along the Tiber River, and stare at the magnitude of Colosseum at night as they eat gelato on a bench – “Trixie won’t forgive me if she finds out I didn’t make you try it”, Chloe points out. From the arena, Lucifer can still hear the cries of gladiators fighting to the death and the chanting of the frenzied crowd, men and women and children thirsty for blood in a way that is now unsettling and disturbing; not that it wasn’t even back then, oh, it was. This new sin, the act of _enjoying_ violence and the suffering of others, opened his eyes on how many ways of doing evil these creatures were capable of, how many practices they could _invent_ not knowing there would be consequences.

Back when there were no guns, no bombs, no weapons of mass destruction, the mere concept of making a spectacle out of death seemed horrifying to him, a wake-up call of sorts: _Stop caring too much about them, they are not worthy of it, they’re flawed and He made them this way._ But then again, wasn’t he flawed, too?

“How was it?” Chloe asks him, always eager for the scraps of his infinite life; they're done with their ice cream cones but she has a bit of gelato under the right corner of her mouth, and he kisses it away before replying, just because he can. She blushes and _Dad_, she’s so pretty when she blushes.

“I guess it was that time’s version of horror movies, except that it was real" he reflects out loud, leaning back with his palms on the bench, thinking about limbs scattering around as hungry lions tore into them from all sides, almost encouraged by the clapping and cheering audience.

“It made you angry, didn’t it?” Chloe asks after a beat – sometimes it’s terrifying, the way she can see right through him.

“All the ways you people hurt each other make me angry" he tells her, because it’s true. “I understand it more now, or, well, let’s say I accept it. Back then, I guess it still shocked me, sometimes. The cruelty you’re capable of. But after all, you were made in His image, and hell if He can’t be cruel.”

He tends to ramble these days, because now that Chloe _knows_, words come easily after years of being labelled as metaphors or delusions. Now that she believes him, he wants her to know everything, although he still fears there are things she won’t understand. But even when she doesn’t truly get it, Chloe smiles and says something funny to lighten the mood, or something deep and wise to voice her opinion, and doesn’t flinch, doesn’t gasp, doesn’t _run_.

“Well, it still shocks me too, even after all the crime scenes I’ve seen" she shrugs, then turns pensive. “I don’t think it would ever stop shocking me, even after thousands of years. And maybe the thing is… it _shouldn’t_ stop shocking you, you know? We should never get used to it. I know I never will.”

_You deserve someone who knows every crime scene breaks your heart_, Lucifer told her once, before she kissed him for the first time, and oh, doesn’t he know it. When she falls asleep in his arms in their hotel room later in the night, he cards his fingers through her hair and promises her to always be there to glue it back together.

The next morning, _Ponte Sant'Angelo_ leads them to the looming, sand-colored fortress of _Castel Sant'Angelo_ and gets them closer to Vatican City (he never actually went there before, and the thought of the Devil walking right through it is hilarious, he has to admit). Ten angels stare down at them, at _him_, as they stroll along the bridge to cross the river, holding instruments of the Passion of Christ: the whips, the crown of thorns, the cross, the lance that wounded him. None of the statues resembles any of his siblings, but then again, there are thousands of them – he doesn’t even know them all.

Still, he sees Uriel in their resolute faces, and instead of judging humanity it suddenly feels like they are judging him instead. They watch from either side of the bridge as he walks, as the real ones did after the Rebellion and before the Fall, almost as stone-faced as these ones if not more. And at the end of the bridge, standing on top of the fortress and looking down, there is Michael with his sword already out of its scabbard and pointed downwards, as it had been; as Lucifer's beaten and bleeding body was dragged before him to receive his punishment – no, _His_ punishment, delivered by daddy’s boy, the righteous one, the just, the _easier_ of the twins to deal with.

They are almost halfway through, and he stops, Chloe bouncing back next to him with the motion as his hand tugs at hers and stops her from moving forward. She follows his gaze and looks up, too, her hand squeezing Lucifer’s when understanding dawns on her.

“He doesn’t look like you at all" she quips, trying her best – doesn’t she always? “And tell me you never had long hair, ‘cause _that_ would be a lot to process.”

He chuckles, still looking up, still feeling _small_.

“I never did, but darling, you know I'd pull it off" he says when he finally looks down at her, smirking.

“No, you wouldn’t" she insists, her eyes squinting under the sunlight and crinkling with playfulness, because she knows, this time, that what he needs is the opposite of deep.

“Should we make it a wager, Detective?” he teases, flicking a lock of imaginary hair over his shoulder, and she laughs. Around them, tourists come and go or stop to take pictures of or with the statues, unaware of the fact that a real angel stands among them. The irony of it amuses him and brings him back to the moment, to the knowledge that what he’s seeing is nothing more than a representation, a work of art, a monument to photograph. It is a monument to so many more things, for him, to defeat and humiliation and loss, but not even the artist himself could be conscious of it.

The saints standing on top of the pillars of St. Peter’s square, when they reach it, seem less judgmental of him, and he feels less uncomfortable than expected. It’s Chloe’s time to be on edge, though: somewhere around here, there is a library where she found refuge from her fears and doubts, where she was handed a vial and a solution she almost went through with. So it’s Lucifer’s time, now, to distract her. He’s past that at this point, but she isn’t; they wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“Come here" he tells her once they’re in front of the basilica, before whipping out his phone for a selfie. He makes a ridiculous, incredulous face as he points up at the dome behind them, and when Chloe laughs, he taps on the screen with his other hand and takes the picture.

“There you have it, Detective, the proof you almost got me inside a church" he says as he shows the image to her.

“Almost? No, no, no, we are going in!” she bounces on her feet. “It’s so beautiful, you’ll see.”

And it is. The marble and the gold, how high the vaults are; it’s not that different from the buildings of the Silver City, and Lucifer internally praises its makers for imitating something they didn’t even take a glance at, at least not until they died. On one side, beyond a glass, sits the wonder that is the _Pietà_ by Michelangelo, the Virgin Mary holding the limp body of her dead son in her arms. He thinks of Mum, of the way she would have done the same with Uriel if he’d let her be the one to lower the angel's body into a hole in the ground. He wonders if she’s happy, where he sent her.

The one thing neither of them have seen turns out to be the Sistine Chapel. Chloe explains to him, with a hint of shame, that at some point during her previous trip she got too caught up in research to be able to focus on anything else. There is excitement in both of them at the thought of experiencing something together for the first time, and they walk in it hand in hand, as they do most things in life, now.

Michelangelo’s _Giudizio Universale_ (he could say it in English, but he just loves to show off his language skills to Chloe by reading pamphlets and descriptions in Italian instead) greets them as the masterpiece that it is, shockingly huge and impossibly detailed, covering the wall behind the altar from floor to ceiling. Angels blow their trumpets to announce the coming of Judgement Day, as humans get split up in two groups: quite simply, who gets to rise up and who is doomed to fall down.

“It’s…” Chloe starts, but seems unable to finish the sentence.

“I know" Lucifer concludes regardless.

_It’s terrifying._

As those deemed worthy are led to the clouds by his winged siblings, sinners are dragged into caves and fiery pits by horned, snickering demons, smiling at them, biting at them, _clawing_ at them as they pull at their feet, their arms, their hair. The damned scramble and fall on top of one another to try and get away, but to no avail: there is no outrunning what one has done, as Lucifer knows all too well.

A question lingers on Chloe’s lips, he can feel it. _Is it really that way?_

But she won’t ask, and he wouldn’t answer. There is no use in telling her that no one drags anyone, that humans fall all on their own, because he knows she’s not bound for that place. Besides, the fresco depicts the end of days: who knows if Father will change the rules eventually, who knows what that moment will look like. Who knows what will be of Lucifer, once this world dissolves into the dust that it was in the beginning, before God breathed life into it. Who knows what will be of Hell, once it’s full and there is no one else to make space for.

“You'd think Dad would be the one to do the judging on Judgement Day" he comments instead, pointing at the towering, accusing figure of Jesus in the middle, his arm raised to do the sentencing. “But then again, He’s always been one to delegate.”

Chloe smiles at him, once she forces her eyes away from the painting; then, her gaze trails upwards, to the ceiling of the chapel.

“Is that the way He looks?” she asks, and when Lucifer looks up as well, he finds himself staring at The Creation of Adam, at two fingers almost touching over a field of white, at the divine and the human who came from it – the very first one, bound to betray and disappoint his maker like all the ones that came after, like Lucifer; in this, in this shared defiance to the rules, he is more human than angel, always has been.

“He doesn’t _look_ like anything, love" he replies, feeling a surge of renewed fondness for her. “I guess it’s easier to imagine him old and wise and comforting like a grandfather, but… you came up with it all on your own.”

“Oh. Makes sense" Chloe shrugs, as if he didn’t just drop a truth of existentially altering proportions on her. After all, she is the Devil’s girlfriend now; few things are bound to shock her at this point, he presumes.

Hell lingers in his bones when they leave, and stays with him for the days that follow, his soul an unwilling canvas under Michelangelo’s paintbrush, turned blue by the sky of his Heaven and red by the background of his Hell, although in truth, the real one is everything but red.

They visit all there is to visit, and some things, even though they speak of him, are just plain funny and absurd more than they are insulting.

“This is just preposterous, Detective!” he laughs, staring at the Pantheon in the middle of the square they just entered. Chloe is deep into a fit of giggles as she reads the brochure they got from the hotel’s reception, trying and failing to stifle her mirth with a hand over her mouth.

“It’s what it says!” she replies, as if that somehow justifies the existence of the ridiculous legend. “The Devil was waiting to collect the soul of a magician after striking a deal with him, but the man ran inside where the Devil couldn’t follow, so he – well, _you_ – started running around the temple, furious, and created its moat in the process. I mean, I can’t- I just can’t help but picture you running around in circles like a dog who chased a cat up a tree!”

“It’s a comfort to know my pain amuses you” Lucifer pouts, his arms crossed over his chest. “Also, why the hell would I want the soul of a bloody magician? To learn how to pull a rabbit out of a hat?”

“Well, if you think about it, you’d be a _great_ magician" Chloe chuckles. “You can get yourself out of any lock, you’d be, like, the next Houdini.”

_Pull yourself together, you look like a homeless magician_, she told him once, after… bloody Hell, why is it that everything in this city reminds him of Uriel? He shakes the thought out of his mind and focuses back on Chloe, on the task of wiping that grin off her face.

“Too bad my hands are full with consulting for a certain homicide Detective. She’d be lost without me” he teases her, nudging her with his shoulder. Chloe smiles at him, then turns more serious than he expected out of this conversation.

“She would" she agrees, with a tenderness that, to this day, overwhelms him to the point of not knowing what to say.

They leave _Fontana di Trevi_ for the last day. There are tourists everywhere, so many that you can barely see the steps under your feet. Chloe wants to get all the way to the main pool, and insists on tossing a coin in it to make a wish, and only now something dawns on Lucifer: how this fountain suddenly seems to have been made to mock him, collecting desires from people like he does; cherishing the one biggest wish of the only person he can’t draw it out of, unless she decides she _wants_ to tell him.

Chloe has her eyes closed in concentration as she throws the coin behind her shoulder and into the water, somehow deeply convinced of the fact that this will actually lead to something besides making the city’s administration richer once all this wasted money will be taken out (it’s a wonder how humans, so fond of their wealth, always find more and more idiotic ways to throw it to the wind), and Lucifer _has_ to know.

“What did you wish for?”

Chloe’s eyes seem to twinkle when she opens them, like all these round pieces of metal left to rot in the crystal-clear waters of the fountain, scattered seeds that will never grow into anything.

“I'm not telling you. It won’t come true if I do!”

“Come now, Detective" he purrs, stepping into her personal space, his hands on her hips. “Surely you don’t believe in these nonsensical superstitions. Tell your handsome Devil what you _desired_.”

The trick is just for show; they both know it doesn’t work, but maybe she’ll give in.

She doesn’t.

It’s night time and they are sitting in the plane now (first class, nothing less for Mr. Lucifer Morningstar), ready to go back to their mundane life, to cases to solve and problems to face as they navigate this time they have been given to spend together, certainly long enough for Chloe but agonizingly short for him. It’s a curse he won’t escape, whether it’s his Father’s doing or not, and like Rome, all he has to do, all he _can_ do, is to keep existing in the face of change, slowly crumbling but never actually fading away.

And still, among these anguished musings and through the fog of a past that threatens to suffocate him, one thought won’t leave his mind.

“Chloe,” he tries, using her name for emphasis, “what did you wish for at the fountain?”

“I said I'm not telling you" she insists without even looking up at him, flipping through a magazine with entirely too much interest (she never was one to care about fancy perfumes and designer shoes, so he’s pretty sure she’s just acting distracted).

Lucifer, grateful for the lightness that can always be summoned into existence between them, realizes he has to whip out the big guns.

“Let’s make a deal, then" he tempts her like the snake he has been depicted to be, leaning closer so that she can feel his breath on her cheek. “If you tell me, we’ll have sex in the bathroom once we take off.”

She snorts, then shakes her head.

“What kind of deal is that? You would have asked me to anyway!”

Which, well, is definitely the truth. _Bugger._ But he knows he can still outsmart her.

“Fine, then let me put this another way. We won’t have sex in the bathroom _unless_ you tell me.”

She raises one eyebrow at him, feigning indifference.

“Okay. Your loss" she shrugs, then looks back at the magazine, the little minx.

“Oh, really?”

He inches closer to whisper directly into her ear, voice smooth and low in that way that drives her crazy.

“So you're telling me you didn’t fantasize about us doing the nasty in there? Maybe during a turbulence?”

“What? No!” Chloe yelps, swallowing, but the shiver down her spine and the quickening of her breathing are unmistakable to him – he can’t read her mind but her body, oh, her body is an open book to him by now.

“You wouldn’t need to do anything, dear, just hold on for the ride” he tells her, pressing a kiss behind her ear, one hand sneaking out of his seat to settle high on her clothed thigh. “I'd make it so good for you, I promise.”

His hand moves higher and almost dips between her legs, but Chloe bats it away.

“Fine, fine!” she concedes, flustered, and Lucifer is well aware that he’s grinning like the Cheshire cat. “I'll tell you, but… I’m not even sure of what I truly meant by it.”

He pulls back, interest officially piqued, and waits patiently for her to continue. It’s such a thrill to finally know what he can’t find out by himself, what is it that the Detective, this almost mythological creature, _truly_ desires. If Rome holds a special place in her heart now, and if in the meantime he can manage to solve this mystery, it’s basically a win-win. And if it’s in his power to grant her wish, he’ll make it happen for her, whatever it is. If he was as proud as history paints him to be, he would feel humiliated by the lengths he would go to make her happy. But the power she has over him is something he feels no shame for.

“I… I wished for you to find peace" Chloe confesses in the end, almost shyly. Lucifer didn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. It’s such a sudden change in the tone of the conversation that for a moment, he feels speechless.

Peace is such a foreign concept to him. There is a sort of restlessness in his soul, a constant moving force that pushes him forward, the spark of rebellion and disobedience embedded in the core of his being. He is a chaser, always going after something (a new body to lose himself into, a new powdery or liquid source of oblivion, another party, another song, another place, another time in the history of humanity); perpetually unable to stop, sit back and admire what he already has or has achieved, like God after his beloved Creation. It’s the key to immortality, to him; the trick to keep boredom away, because the threat of it is always around the corner for someone like him. To follow, to serve, to obey is to slowly, inexorably, die.

But then he looks at Chloe, her bottom lip between her teeth as she waits for him to say something, and thinks of the memories they did manage to create for themselves in this city that is as eternal as he is, and terrifyingly so. And he realizes with striking clarity that Chloe is, quite simply, the fulfillment of her own wish. She is the one thing he won’t get tired of, the rock he clings to in this constant storm that rocks him, agitates him, almost drowns him at times. She is the shore he buries his fingers in when he needs rest, his cheek pressed to the sand in an exhale of relief. She is the quiet in an onslaught of angry voices, all of them coming from within.

So he kisses her, and hopes it’s an answer she will understand. She keeps his face close with one hand on his cheek, a soft sigh escaping her lips and drifting past his own, and Hell, not the one down below but the one raging inside, claws at his insides with less force than a moment ago, receding until it’s, once again, just a painting on a wall – and an inaccurate one at that.

_This_, he thinks, _is all the peace I need._

**Author's Note:**

> Did it show that I deeply love my country’s capital city and that I wanted to show off how amazing it is? Probably. I thought of including pictures of the places, but then I decided I wanted Lucifer’s descriptions and thoughts to paint the picture. Still, I encourage you to check them out if you want a clearer idea, especially Michelangelo’s _Last Judgement_ if you’re not familiar with it, because it is _the_ most gorgeous thing. I hope you enjoyed this little tribute, and thank you for reading! ❤


End file.
